Originator

by Joel Shepherd

Danya woke at 7 to go running as he usually did, slipping out quietly so he didn’t wake Svetlana, still asleep in her pyjamas on her side of the bed. Kiril had adjusted to sleeping alone, but Svetlana still came in sometimes, when something bothered her. Lifetime habits that your lives had once depended on were hard to break, and the kids at school who’d found out and teased them and made dirty jokes could go to hell; it just increased the number of kids he had no interest spending time with. Give them five years in Droze, scared to sleep in case someone killed them in the night, and see how fast they started sleeping in groups.

  He came downstairs carrying his shoes, to find Sandy already in the kitchen, with a small arsenal laid out on the benches. The understairs secure safe was open, a steel compartment behind the panelling, unlockable only with secure uplink codes. Within, now laid on the benches, were a pair of snub-nosed assault rifles, three pistols, various magazines, an underside grenade launcher (currently detached) and a brace of multipurpose grenades, to be fired or thrown.

  “Morning,” she said breezily, cleaning the stripped-down barrel of one rifle. She had synthetic oil out and cleaning implements. Every weapon gleamed, and the air smelled of lubricant. She wore neat-fitting cargo pants and a sleeveless shirt, bare arms lean with muscle.

  Danya submitted to the morning kiss so that he could take a closer look at the weapons. “You keep grenades here?”

  “Sure. They’re actually safer than guns. You can’t set them off without uplink or biometric triggers.” Meaning that the molecular sensors would have to recognise her finger contact, or her breath, before priming. Unactivated, the charge was as chemically inert as granite; you could play cricket with them.

  Danya fetched a banana and some juice, watching her fast hands reassemble the weapon, automatic, like tying shoelaces.

  “You mind waiting until Poole gets here?” Sandy asked him.

  Danya blinked, stretching his quads, mouth full of banana. “Poole’s coming?”

  “Yep. He’s on security detail for you guys today.”

  “He’s coming to school?” Sandy nodded, disassembling one of the pistols at similar speed. “Cool.” Cautiously. It had happened a few times before, and the school didn’t mind, Canas being the neighbourhood it was. “Something going on?”

  “Nothing I can talk about.” Threading the barrel with the cleaning tool. “And I’ll be taking Kiril today. He gets the day off school.”

  “Okay.” He did his calf stretches against the bench with the just-cleaned rifle, getting a better look. “When are you going to teach me to use one of these?”

  “Hopefully never. But I can’t stop you from learning when you’re old enough.”

  “Yeah. Cause whoever might want to hurt us will be nice enough to wait until I’m older.”

  Sandy looked at him, eyes lidded as she cleaned. Weighing options, but for now, unconvinced. “You gonna carry to school?” she asked drily.

  “Seems a pity to have them at home and not be able to use them if I needed to,” he reasoned.

  “And Svetlana will want lessons if you get them, and we all know how that turned out, last time she had a gun.”

  “Yeah. She saved my life.” Sandy’s gaze remained unreadable. That was odd, usually her guard was down at home. Reminders of Svetlana’s most recent and profound trauma usually got a reaction. Today, nothing.

  Sandy polarised the cruiser’s windows on the way in, so that Kiril could not see where they were going. In reality, it was Kingly, a beachside suburb beyond the main Tanushan grid and not far from her favourite surfing spots. All network traffic blanked and Kiril wearing his repressor headband, she landed on a sandy vacant lot that was used as a temporary transition zone, then drove to a nondescript suburban house using forward cameras and into the carport. She depolarised the windows as the carport sealed behind them, and interior lights revealed bare concrete.

  “Sandy, where are we?” asked Kiril, looking up from his compslate.

  Sandy fought back a smile, shutting down the cruiser systems individually to make sure none of the automatics would relay something they shouldn’t. “Why did I polarise the windows, Kiril?”

  “So I couldn’t see.”

  “So why would I tell you where we are?”

  Kiril thought about it. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Stow that slate and let’s go. Out this side, please.” Gesturing him to climb across and come out through her driver’s door. He did, as she pulled her pistol. “Here.” She picked him up with her right arm—he was getting too big for that really, but weight was hardly an issue for her.

  “But I wanna walk!” he insisted as she went to the only obvious door in the carport’s concrete walls.

  “Tough,” she said. “Open the door, would you?” He did that, as her hands were full. Sandy stood side profile for a moment in the doorway, pistol not raised but ready. Ahead, another stretch of corridor, all dark.

  “Why do you have your gun out?” Kiril asked, noticing that for the first time. He’d seen her handle weapons before, but never like this, entering some strange Tanushan place.

  “I’m being very careful this morning,” said Sandy, walking down the corridor, adjusting her gait for Kiril’s weight. “We’re going to see an old friend of mine.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see in a minute.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “That’s okay, I can see fine.”

  At the downward stairs Sandy saw defensive emplacements in the walls, probably gas, possibly those sonic blast weapons they’d used in the shuttle. Anti-GI defences, for sure. But FedInt would never risk hurting Kiril. Assuming they knew all of what Kiril was. Given they had Takewashi to talk to, she didn’t doubt it.

  The corridor ended on a new door, which opened as she approached, flooding the darkness with light. Here was another bare room but for a pair of lean, doglike creatures who stood and studied her with unreadably curious demeanours.

  “Oh look,” said Sandy, to blunt any misgivings Kiril might have. “Nice doggies.”

  “They’re not dogs,” said Kiril. “They’re asura. They come from Emerald, they’re really smart.” The asura circled aside from their bed baskets on the floor, lean-faced and sinewy. Bodies more catlike in their agility, but the faces were all dog, thrusting snout and pricked ears. “They’re kind of dangerous,” Kiril added as he recalled what he’d read.

  “Well, luckily for us, so am I.” Sandy walked slowly past them to the next door. The asura weren’t there for fighting, she knew. Their smell was exceptional and when combined with intelligence made them suitable for anti-GI work. She wasn’t especially worried—if FedInt hadn’t trained these two to behave, they’d be searching for two new ones very quickly. She usually liked animals, but not these ones, with Kiril on one arm. And not some humans either.

  Beyond the next door was an open-plan house, pale-blue floor tiles and white walls, overlooking a beach. As Sandy had suspected, the tunnel had led beneath dunes to another house. It appeared to be built into the dune face here, with sand above. It meant there was only one point of assault for any attacker—the windows onto the beach, about which there were doubtless many other defences.

  In the living room before the windows, Shin got to his feet. With him were three other agents, two men and a woman, similarly rising. And Ragi, wearing a nice suit, but semi-casual without a tie. Like a young man dressing up for the first time for a formal function, Sandy thought . . . which was not far from the truth.

  Amongst them all sat Takewashi in his usual kimono, this one was white with silver trim, in a comfortable white chair before the brilliant sunlight of a Tanushan beach. Sandy glimpsed a surfer, out beyond the break, awaiting a wave. The swell did not look promising today, but surfers were optimists.

  All stood for her arrival, Takewashi shakily, on his cane. Seated alongside, Ragi hovered, ready to offer assistance. Sandy refrained from rolling her eyes.

  “Cassandra!” said Takewashi, his
face creasing into a smile that hid his eyes completely. “Oh, and you have brought me a visitor! This young man must be Kiril Kresnov.” Sandy let Kiril down, to stand by her side. But he took her right hand, unasked. “Kiril, my name is Renaldo Takewashi. I’m an old friend of your mother’s.”

  It made Sandy edgy, this man pressing these concepts into Kiril’s head. None of the kids were entirely clear on the whole “mother” thing—Danya and Svetlana had known their real mother, and Kiril had heard stories about her. Sandy did not want them to forget and had even helped them to find information on Lidya Seravitch, with photographs and life history, as much as Federation investigation into League archives could reveal from this distance. They’d not yet taken to calling Sandy “mum,” and Sandy wasn’t sure she wanted them to. She was their legal guardian, and best adult friend, and lethal protector. The head of their family, such as it was. That was plenty, but now Takewashi, for his own purposes, came thrusting that word at Kiril. Imposing judgements on him.

  “Hello,” said Kiril. “I’ve heard about you. Sandy told me.”

  “Kiril,” Sandy reminded, “call him Mr Takewashi. That’s the proper thing to say with an older man.”

  Kiril nodded. “How did you get to Tanusha?” he asked, completely forgetting what she’d just told him. Sandy nearly sighed. “Were you on that ship that the League were trying to blow up?”

  Takewashi straightened, with a look of amazement that was part real and part exaggeration for the boy. “Well! Cassandra, you have a smart one! Yes, I was on that ship, Kiril. And do you know? You were one of the reasons I wanted to come back to Callay so badly.”

  Kiril looked unsure, a half-frown half-smile. Uncertain if he was being made fun of. “Me?”

  “Yes. Please, won’t everyone sit?” Takewashi gestured around. All the agents looked to Shin first and sat only at his indication. A two-person sofa was beside Takewashi’s chair, at ninety degrees and angled to the windows. Sandy took it and patted the cushions for Kiril to get up alongside.

  Shin and a few of the agents were looking with some concern at Kiril. “Cassandra,” said Shin, “why did you bring him?”

  Probably it upset their psych profiles. They knew she was protective, dangerously so if threatened. They wouldn’t think she’d bring him to work, especially not this work. Which told her that they didn’t know the full details of what he was. Or not what she suspected. And any time she did something that violated FedInt’s psych profile, they got nervous.

  “He knows,” said Sandy, looking at Takewashi. “All these little seeds he’s sowed across the galaxy. Ragi was one. Weren’t you, Ragi?”

  “It would appear that way,” said Ragi. Looking at Takewashi with something approaching . . . not worship, no. Ragi had an IQ off the charts and was far too rational for that. But there was longing in his eyes, and the hope of answers. “From the beginning, there were few other explanations of why I could exist. Different as I am.”

  “The uplinks in Kiril’s head are another,” said Sandy. “Renaldo was hooked into the corporate research programs on Droze from the beginning. After all, he’s old enough to have been in on the original discovery. Weren’t you?”

  With a steady gaze at Takewashi. Takewashi’s gaze dropped briefly to consider the pistol, still in her hand. No one had demanded that she put it away or give it up. All knew that she was nearly as lethal without it, and one did not invite Cassandra Kresnov into a room unless you were confident she would not hurt you. Thus their disquiet at unpredicted behaviour.

  “Its immediate aftermath, yes,” Takewashi conceded. “Under stand, Cassandra, Chancelry Corporation was only small then. A few scientists and businessmen, making a joint exploratory venture. They discovered Talee outposts on Pantala and wanted to monetise their discovery. Before League Gov stepped in and took it from them.”

  “Which they did.”

  “Oh, but with a large slice for Chancelry,” said Takewashi. “But they did not know how to make sense of what they’d found. Thus they called for my expertise, and I was able to understand the technology. It was so advanced, Cassandra. So advanced. I used every simulation then available to me, every processor, every AI matrix, and still I felt that my brain would bleed from the effort.” He spread his hands widely within flowing sleeves. “And yet here we are.” Indicating both her and Ragi.

  “Mr Takewashi,” Ragi asked earnestly. “How did you make the leap between the second- and third-generation neural models? The technological concepts involved had nearly nothing in common with where human research—League research—had reached at the time, and . . .”

  “He didn’t,” Sandy interrupted. Watching the old man with half-lidded eyes. “Renaldo’s initial training wasn’t neuroscience, or biotech. It was linguistics.”

  “The neurology of linguistics, Cassandra,” Takewashi corrected with a benign smile.

  “You’re a translator,” said Sandy. “You translated what you found in Talee symbols and language into things humans could understand, you borrowed and copied, you didn’t create anything.”

  Takewashi shook his head. “Now, now, Cassandra, that’s not quite right . . .”

  “And then you claimed all the credit for yourself, because how lucky for you, your government decided it would keep these discoveries a secret and let the Federation think that League science alone had made this astounding breakthrough. Or did you play some role in persuading them of that decision also?”

  A flash of frustration crossed Takewashi’s face. Perhaps anger, quickly suppressed. The too-wide smile replaced it, like a slash. “Cassandra, I have come this far to help you. Perhaps you should think of that before hurling these grotesque accusations. . . .”

  “He’s not your creator, Ragi,” Sandy told the bewildered young GI by Takewashi’s side. “He’s a fraud. Always has been. He’s been playing with things he’s never truly understood, and now he’s reached the last page of the Talee instruction manual, and he’s scared and out of ideas.”

  Takewashi glared at her, jaw set hard. FedInt agents looked urgently to Shin for guidance, for hints of how they might intervene. Shin merely watched, always cautious.

  Sandy leaned forward and put her arms on her knees, pistol loose in hand. “If you’ve set them on my boy,” she said coolly, “if you’ve made some trouble with the Talee that brings them here and puts Kiril in danger, then you and I will have a real problem. Do you understand?”

  It had scared her since she’d known where Kiril’s uplinks came from. Takewashi’s insider at Chancelry Corporation—Margaritte Karavitis, a mole of his, who Sandy suspected but had never been able to prove had played a key role in Kiril’s operation.

  “Did you give her the tech?” she persisted. “Karavitis? You had all these pages of Talee manuals you hadn’t gotten to yet, or hadn’t found a way to make work—that’s why there’s so many different kinds of synthetic neurology, isn’t it? Why I’m a rare and unusual kind, and Ragi’s another kind again. And Jane was. More pages in the Talee manual—let’s try this one, this one looks like fun. And so another one of us is born and spends an entire life wrestling with the bloody consequences of your curiosity.”

  “Cassandra, you don’t understand,” Takewashi said sternly. Nearly composed, with effort. “League’s use of Talee technology uplinks is causing a neurological and sociological condition, as you know . . . or rather, a neurological condition whose manifestation is only observable in sociological outcomes. A group condition, of transmitting thoughts, of forming collective identities.

  “We were working on cures. But we were not working fast enough, so League Gov went to the Torah Systems, to Pantala, where the regulations are . . . less onerous. They were desperate, and still are. You saw the results there, the GIs used for terrible experiments. Synthetic brains are similar enough to human brains that they make a good template to study the technological effects of uplink activity and data-process distribution. I would not allow it!”

  His voice shook with anger, his gnar
led knuckles tightening upon the cane.

  “I would not allow it in my labs, and so they left and took it to Pantala, where the Corporations were beyond my reach. But I had a mole there. Karavitis, a talented researcher. They knew she was mine, but they did not fear me, and valued what information she possessed. My research was advanced, and the Corporations of the Torah Systems have no real knowledge of the information they possess—it is all residual data, their only advantage comes from their utter lack of morals in pursuit of results. Karavitis suggested to them a technique. It is the best thing I have yet developed. My brightest hope. I did not ask that they implant it in a child, but in children it achieves the best results.”

  “What is it?” Sandy asked. Takewashi knew better than most what her unwavering stare meant.

  “It is . . .” Takewashi exhaled hard and stared down at the floor. “It is something I have not dared to use before now.” He looked up. “Cassandra. You are aware that the Talee are a dual-ELE species?”

  Sandy nodded. No surprised looks or frowns from the others. Of course not, they were spies. If the FSA knew, FedInt would know. “Self-inflicted, I know.”

  “Twenty years ago,” Takewashi continued, “I had a visit. From a synthetic woman who was not of human construction. You are aware of these individuals.” Again, Sandy nodded. “Fleet and ISO had known of them for some time before, but this was my first encounter. She warned me that there was one branch of research that I could not explore. That the Talee would make certain would never succeed, should we try. She was quite explicit.

  “And so for fifteen years I did as she asked, and avoided the field entirely. Until League’s problems began to manifest, and I returned to it. The synthetic neurology involved led me to new uplink technology, which grew by self-analysis and learning. I could not have attempted it twenty years ago even had I tried. But now, the technology has moved along, and whatever its Talee origins, Cassandra, we do now understand considerably the fundamentals.”

  “So test it on your own damn kids, why don’t you?” Sandy replied dangerously.